Tekken savant Arslan Ash has been stirring the pot together with his feedback relating to the present state of the sport’s character stability, placing a nerve with fellow professional Knee in an sudden rivalry.
The talk flared up a few weeks earlier than Evo 2025. Korean Tekken participant Knee has been on a tear defending Bryan, a personality largely thought-about by many in the neighborhood to be top-of-the-line within the sport proper now, and with whom he received Evo Japan earlier this yr.
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Others within the scene — together with five-time Evo champion Arslan Ash, specifically — aren’t proud of how blatantly top-tier Bryan is at current. Whereas the dialog has been simmering for a sizzling minute, issues escalated when Arslan uploaded a video of different professional gamers agreeing with him that Bryan is prime three within the present meta.
Knee was fast to hit again, suggesting a first-to-ten set towards Ash, whereby Ash would play Bryan, whereas he would use Nina. “The reality is, you simply can’t play Bryan. You may’t deal with him. That’s why you’re busy taking part in politics, asking for nerfs,” Knee boasted.
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Ash agreed, setting a date for someday in 2026 for a attainable “Korea vs Pakistan” occasion. Knee, nevertheless, accused Ash of ducking him by planning a date to date sooner or later relatively than operating the set at Evo. That’s when Justin Wong stepped in, asking: “How a lot do you assume it will take to make Knee vs Arslan occur?”
Arslan set the worth at $20K — however when Justin requested to verify the “winner takes all” cash match, Arslan challenged him to fund it, prompting one other spherical of confusion and criticism from the neighborhood.
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With that setup out of the way in which, right here’s what Arslan needed to say concerning the ongoing beef.
Arslan addresses his viral ‘Bryan prime 3’ debate with Knee
To date, no official FT10 has been arrange between the 2 gamers, and their feud continues to simmer simply beneath the floor as Evo will get underway. We acquired the prospect to ask Arslan concerning the dialogue and the way he feels concerning the preventing sport neighborhood’s response to it.
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“ For me, I don’t downplay my character,” he informed us. “If I’m taking part in Anna proper now, I’ll all the time say that she’s top-tier, and that’s why I’m taking part in her. However the Bryan mains, they’re like… loopy.
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“So you’ve me, and I’ve an excellent variety of followers. After which you’ve Knee, and he additionally has an excellent quantity of followers. So if I say one thing towards his character or towards him, all of his viewers will begin saying unhealthy issues about me. If I say Bryan’s top-tier, I believe [Knee] likes to downplay. I don’t know what the reason being.
“We’re allowed to say something we would like, proper? For those who assume I don’t like apples, as an illustration — yeah, that’s tremendous. If I say Bryan is top-tier, that must be tremendous. You can not say, ‘No, you need to play this character to say in the event that they’re top-tier or not.’ It’s the identical factor that I mentioned on Twitter: You don’t must be a chef to say the meals is unhealthy. You may see that the character is damaged. That character received Evo Japan. [Knee] thinks I’m doing politics, that I’m getting his character nerfed by posting quite a bit, however that character ought to get nerfed increasingly.”
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Arslan Ash competed towards Knee at Combo Breaker earlier this yr – now, the 2 are going through off on-line over Tekken 8’s character stability.
Regardless of the meat, Arslan has no real-life feud together with his fellow preventing sport participant. He merely feels that they every have completely different opinions of the sport, saying it isn’t one thing that impacts their relationship in the true world.
“I like him as an individual,” he mentioned. “However relating to the sport, relating to Tekken, we have now completely different opinions. However he’s very nice. Each time I meet him, we discuss quite a bit concerning the sport and different issues, however our mentality has all the time been completely different concerning the character decisions or no matter in Tekken.”
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Arslan Ash desires Tekken 8 devs to hurry up stability patches
It’s secure to say that Arslan has beef with the pace of Tekken’s stability patches, although. The sport’s improvement group has been clear about delaying these patches to keep away from impacting main tournaments like Evo — and whereas he’s understanding of this, Arslan thinks Bandai may nonetheless meet rivals midway.
“ I’m not a developer, however I really feel like in case you have a really large franchise like Tekken, you need to have an even bigger group balancing the entire thing,” he argued. “I believe it shouldn’t take an excessive amount of time so that you can stability.
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“The sport goes in the appropriate course. Each patch is getting higher and higher, however they will make it sooner. As a competitor, it’s our responsibility to be taught and adapt. However in addition they can’t introduce an even bigger patch simply two weeks earlier than an enormous event, so it kinda is sensible, however they will do it sooner, proper?”
For now, the FGC is ready with bated breath for the last word fruits of Arslan and Knee’s feud — nevertheless it’s anybody’s guess as as to whether or not they’ll really run the set to find out whether or not or not Bryan is actually as top-tier as he’s made out to be.
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